Low-fare airline, Germanwings, has added Polish Centralwings, owned by Polish State-owned airline LOT, to its pan-European partnership structure in what Centralwings sees as a next step in the inevitable consolidation of the low-cost airline sector in Europe.
"Consolidation is the direction this market will be taking in coming years," Centralwings CEO Piotr Kociolek told journalists on Tuesday.
Centralwings is the new low-fare arm of LOT, which has already taken over LOT's charter flights and will start regularly scheduled flights from February 1. It joins British low-fare carrier bmibaby in Germanwings' expanding pan-European partnership scheme. Germanwings, established in 2002, is 100% owned by German Europe-wide regional airline Eurowings, in turn 49% owned by Germany's Lufthansa. bmibaby is operated by bmi (formerly British Midland). Both bmi and LOT are members of the Lufthansa-led airline alliance, Star Alliance.
German airline's fundamental criteria when choosing partners is a solid financial base.
"[And] we view Centralwings as one of the most solid partners we could have in the Central and Eastern Europe," Germanwings Managing Director Andreas Bierwirth said.
The Centralwings CEO Piotr Kociolek assured that parent LOT would guarantee financial and operational stability for its subsidiary.
Germanwings will also continue to expand the partnership scheme.
"The 'Starlet Alliance' is further open to membership for other airlines within the Star Alliance group and European regional airlines," Bierwirth said but without revealing the identity of further potential partners.
The aim of the new partnership between Germanwings and Centralwings is for both airlines to achieve leading positions domestically and offer a wider choice of destinations, he said. For example, travelers on Germanwings will be able to connect in Warsaw to a Centralwings flight to Egypt. In addition, the two airlines will run joint marketing efforts for connections to other European countries and plan to share airport-service fees.
Germanwings commenced Polish operations from Warsaw in March last year and currently offers connections between Warsaw and southern Poland's Krakow to Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart.
Centralwings' February inaugural low-fare flights will be from Warsaw and Krakow to London. Scheduled connections to German cities will include flights to Hanover, Nuremberg and Cologne/Bonn from Warsaw and/or the southern Polish city of Katowice.
Centralwings' strategy closely follows the model used by its new German partner and as part of the partnership both airlines will use the same IT system for ticket reservations.
The new partnership faces-off against competition from Hungarian low-fare carrier Wizz Air, Slovakia-based Sky Europe, Britain's easyJet, Air Berlin and former Austrian racing driver Niki Lauda's new venture, Niki.
Ireland's Ryanair, Europe's leading low-fare carrier, intends to enter the Polish market on March 24, but chose to fly routes to and from the Wroclaw airport in southwestern Poland instead of Warsaw, Krakow or Katowice purely for cost reasons, the airline's representatives said.
Poland's Air Polonia, the first low-fare airline to take to Polish skies, grounded all flights in early December 2004 after just one year in operation after a potential investor withdrew a promised loan.
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